by Steve Ersinghaus

Tag Archives: narrative

interlude my mother is fond of the claim: gardens, time, gardens time. Yes, she would say, tomorrow, will another garden be. In Richard Three: “. . . our firm estate, When our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up” which was, she said, the last thing she heard […]

interlude sometimes pauses come at awkward periods. In this case the thought of my father closing his fingers around the guide bar of the saw before the chain had a chance to stop followed my hand to the door knob soon after the soft knock came and the silence behind the door as I reached […]

canto 37 and so I told her I would wait and she said wait for what: for love, for sex, for companionship, for the presence of me among the Meadows where I grew flowers and made friendships with the ducks? henry and Lucy took me for drinks for consolation, something frothy in a glass, while […]

canto 36 we had conversation where our boxes gave us every other word or several other words redacted so that what might have been: When the sun rises when the sun rises the night turns tail and the bushes and the corners of the buildings and the silver fenders of the automobiles emerge and the […]

interlude it’s often the case one doesn’t know who one’s with. for example, once I slapped a roach off Henry’s shoulder but it was a skin roach, a roach construed of melanin and the tree shadows convening on the lake shore, some outing time, some autumn, maybe. it’s likely, I said, that a roach’d fall […]

interlude I said wait wait wait and felt a long rectangle extend out into gray space where I had yet to reach but hoped to reach and imagined a nightwing moth coming to the bush flowers and the other flowers I used to watch where the moth would visit and the leaves and the flowers […]

canto 34 and Lucy was provided for, coming in with a bible, a study bible, another bible, colored red, a Jerusalem version, and lessons on the real creator of the universe in pamphlets, given her, she said, by my father. with a smile? I asked, and she smiled. she sat at the couch and put […]

canto 33 look at all the water surrounding you, lakedweller, who would ask me for more? look how your father with the club of his hand waves as the crowds embark with that old fridge, those book boxes, crates of wine year-aged, at the window you watch with your mother, who may or may not […]

canto 32 until I improved. But I wondered: what would I do if improvement never came, which should happen, according to the evidence, and if death comes who would find me? maybe the sun fears its own chilling . . . but then I heard a pol on TV call for mass prayer, saying: god […]

interlude I saw two small wasps having sexual intercourse on my balcony wall, but not much happened in the periods following. I grew ill, I had difficulty perceiving clearly whether it was on the wall or not on the wall, the shape of my hands, Lucy sounds, as she passed here and there, with her […]

Oddly enough I could not remember anything else than the most elementary facts of my life. interlude I saw two small wasps having sexual intercourse on my balcony wall, one on the top the other beneath the one on top wriggling over the one on the bottom, who also wriggled in a strange small, energetic […]

I walk outside on legs of fragile reeds. canto 31 Henry had a bird on his hand, that fluttered when he moved his fingers through Lucy’s hair now dyed red, the color of the small bird made by the discolor on Henry’s hands, while my father wondered on his new bed at the strange itch […]

canto 30 she said: I froze, or, rather, felt the muscles seize, the same way children might at the appearance of a bus, a car, approaching and the senses convey swerve and soon, in the soonness of immediacy, simple geometry, and the impendingness of impend ing crumple, blood, and shock, the bus, the car will […]

canto 29 yes, sometimes I forget which hand to use: the left or the right. the way my mother tells the story: she asked him to take down some limbs with the efficient eyes of the surgeon, a hundred times in a life time of cutting, assistance, clearing, the everyday weed piles, holes, clutter making, […]

interlude i told her I didn’t eat the roses; I told her I didn’t eat the coffee; I told her I didn’t eat the cat; I told her I didn’t eat the tires off the car but nevertheless, the woman with the tulip cup had soft lips; soft lips; I remember them, driving Interstate 10, […]

100 Days :: Summer 2011

This will be my fourth year participating in the fun, exciting, and challenging 100 Days projects: year 1 I wrote one hundred poems; year two I wrote one hundred stories; year three I wrote 100 fictions. For 2011 I will round things out with another 100 poems.

But what's the intention. This summer my focus will be on hunting things down and tagging, hyperlinking, and using social media to identify those found items that inspire the poems. I will be watching for what the artists, musicians, and other creators do and will try to make poetry out of "found relationships." But also thinking hard about imagery, language, and orthographics. I've never been comfortable with punctuation in poetry but I am fascinated by putting heavy trucks on the edges of leaves or turning one celled creatures into things that point north, where yellow ducks live.